Pokemon Review (BW2): Piloswine & Mamoswine

Piloswine and its evolution, Mamoswine, are some icy swine Pokemon. They are Ground/Ice-type Pokemon, giving them a whole ton of weaknesses, but thankfully they have some rather beefy stats to compensate for it. Piloswine evolves into Mamoswine after it gains a level while it knows AncientPower, which you can relearn by exchanging a Heart Scale in the Pokemon World Tournament. You should try to evolve it as soon as you get it. As a Mamoswine, it has massive Attack, huge HP, and then some pretty decent Defense and Speed. Its Special Defense is low, but its beefy HP makes up for it. It has either the Oblivious or Snow Cloak abilities. Oblivious prevents it from becoming infatuated by Attract or Cute Charm, while Snow Cloak raises its evasion by 20% while the weather is hailing. Snow Cloak is probably the better of the two.

For moves, Piloswine starts off with some decent moves, particularly if you start at level 46, when it learns the all-powerful Earthquake. While that may normally be late, since you get it so late in the game anyway, you'll only have to gain two levels tops to get it, which isn't so bad at all. Since you'll have to teach it AncientPower via the Reminder Girl, it's probably a good time to point out other nice attacks in its past, although really the only one that works well for it is Ice Fang, mostly because it's a Physical-based Ice-type attack (it'll probably do more than Ice Beam will thanks to the huge difference between its Attack and Special Attack). Thrash isn't too bad, either, hitting for a solid 120 power, although it'll lock you into the attack for two to three turns and confuse you afterwards.

While Mamoswine doesn't learn a lot of TM moves, it learns a few that are nice to have. Rock Slide is definitely the most helpful option to give it better type coverage. Hail works very well in conjunction with Snow Cloak, although since it isn't as happy to use Blizzard as it is Ice Fang, it doesn't work as nicely as a combo for it. Bulldoze, while weaker than Earthquake, can actually be helpful for it since it has only decent Speed — it should be faster to outspeed a lot of things, but for the things it can't outspeed, it'll often be able to outspeed if their Speed is lowered by one stage (2/3 their usual stat). That means you can hit a faster Pokemon with Bulldoze and then Earthquake to finish it, getting hit only once, whereas using two Earthquakes (if one wasn't enough to knock it out) would mean a faster Pokemon would strike twice. It doesn't have too many moves to learn, either, which is why I mentioned that approach. Surprisingly enough, it actually has access to both Light Screen and Reflect to help support your team and raise its defensive stats to suit your needs. Its Special Defense is rather lacking, so Light Screen is particularly helpful, but you can swap them around by using TMs to reflect your current needs. Thankfully, it learns a lot better Move Tutor moves. Iron Head for 4 Red Shards is rather fun, is an 80 power Steel-type attack, plus it has a 30% chance of causing flinch. Superpower is a strong 120 power Fighting-type attack, but it lowers its Attack and Defense by one stage after use, meaning you'll almost certainly want to switch it out afterwards to restore its strength.

All things considered, Mamoswine is a real powerhouse. It lacks a lot of diversity in its moves, plus it lacks a strong Physical-based Ice-type attack, but it's really tough to beat the strength of its Earthquakes and you'll find that Ice Fang still hits plenty hard. I'd recommend it, yeah.